"I just gave the new iPad an Editors' Choice award for large tablets, but frankly it was a foregone conclusion. The iPad doesn't get the award because of its hardware, lovely as the hardware is. It gets the award because its apps are generally better than the apps available for Android tablets." The laptop gap may have been closed, but the tablet gap sure hasn't.

The problem that the article identifies is specifically with iPad apps vs. Android apps on tablets (whether designed for tablets or not). So keep in mind that comparisons on the iPhone vs. Android phones will be less relevant.

Yelp is a great example. Not much difference from the iPhone on either Android phones or tablets. But that's problematic on a tablet. It means that, instead of clicking on a small list of restaurants and seeing the info right beside it, you're switching screens. Then you'll need to go back to that giant list in order to see more info. It's just poor workmanship and disinterest in the platform, which is particularly sad for a business like Yelp that doesn't benefit from normal app monetization.

In other categories it's more glaring. While you only need one twitter app, iPad twitter apps are an embarrassment of riches (Tweetbot and Twitteriffic, for example). Then there are developers that repeatedly make great apps on the iOS platform, like Tapbots (who developed Tweetbot) and Omnigroup (OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, Omnifocus, OmniPlan), Sophiestication (Articles and Magical Weather), and Marco Arment (Instapaper). Some of these apps are expensive, even for iOS users, but in any one of them you can tell that every detail is considered and designed with care.

Android needs more developers like the one that developed Papermill, who will hopefully extend that amount of care to the tablet version of their apps.

As for the Google-developed apps on Android, they seem great. Though I'm not a fan of G+ on the iPhone. Simple things like failing to save my login make me less likely to stay engaged. The Google Search app for the iPad is easily the best app for the device, the rest are absolutely terrible.